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Unlike most of my wedding decisions, I went back and forth on the ideas of favors for my guests. My biggest pet peeve as a wedding guest is when the bride gives out thoughtless dollar store favors and you throw it out the minute you get home. Or worse, you keep it, feeling guilty for throwing out whatever she gave you. I really loved the idea of a popcorn bar. My mom’s best friend attended a wedding a few months back and they had a popcorn bar. It was the perfect amount of rustic that I was going for. I also loved the idea of feeding your guests after a long night of partying it out on the dance floor. After a few months of thinking about the popcorn bar, I came to several conclusions. One, the popcorn bar would work perfectly as a small wedding but with over 300 people on my wedding list, the popcorn bar could become more of a hassle then anything. Also, I began to have nightmares of my drunken friends tossing popcorn at each other in the shuttle on the way back to the hotel. Yes, they act like they are ten years old. My mom is still finding ham from my graduation party lunch meat fight. Finally, at the end of the night, our banquet manager is also a personal friend and the last thing I want her to be worrying about is our stupid popcorn bar.

So my genius idea of a popcorn bar was soon thrown out the window. While searching for favor ideas, I came across DIY hot chocolate on Wedding Paper Divas blog. I thought it was the cutest idea and if I was ever to have a winter wedding, this would be my favor of choice. Then I thought about it. My wedding is in the fall, couldn’t hot chocolate be considered a favor option. Then it hit me, pumpkin spice anything is a very popular flavor during the fall, what about pumpkin spice hot chocolate?

Obviously, I have not tried out my idea yet and will write a post about the creation of my pumpkin spice hot chocolate but I did test out the packaging! I bought the mason jars from an online store. The lace burlap I got from Michael’s and the tag I got from the etsy shop TheLovebirdPress. I love all of their tags and printables and highly recommend them.

Personal Photo

I wasn’t sure how I would hand these out but I decided they would just enhance the look of our tables. So I’ve decided to place them at each setting for each couple. Another trend that I love is the mason jars for each guest to drink out of. I think this is adorable and such a great idea. A few months ago, I bought 280 mason jars with handles. I’m waiting until we get closer to the wedding but I also purchased chalkboard tags for the jars as well from LakeEffectTreasury. If you’re going to be ordering a lot like I did, I would recommend contacting her for your own listening. She even threw in a couple extra which I really appreciated.

The final look of the mason jar glasses looked like this:

I also made the flags myself! (Another post for another day) I struggled with purchasing paper straws because I had a friend who used them for her wedding and they disintegrated before the first drink. Obviously they’re more for looks then actual use but I wanted them to last at least a drink or two. I bought my straws from (where else?) etsy! I bought them from BakersBlingShop and when I tested them out, they got a little mushy after a few drinks but all in all, it was successful!

I plan to have these mason jars all sitting on a table so guests can grab them when they walk in! I know we have two favors instead of one, but it means a lot to me to have gifts that our friends will enjoy to thank them for celebrating our special day with us!

What are your favor ideas? Are you DIY-ing or are you buying them? Did you decide to go the edible route?

Going into my wedding, I decided that I really wanted to have some thoughtful touches throughout the wedding to make people “oh that’s sweet”. Now, I’m not getting my hopes up and I do realize that 80% of the wedding won’t care or notice any of these classic touches but I am still determined to make them! I’ve added a few DIY projects to my list, the first being my centerpieces and table numbers. My inspiration for this came from, where else, Pintrest. Seriously, how did people plan weddings before it?

I have a few tweaks to the centerpieces, so it’s not exactly the picture showed but I do love the wood slices and the twine wrapped bottle. Luckily, Snick’s dad’s best friend actually cuts down trees, so he was able to cut up about thirty slices for us. This happened a few months ago and they have just been sitting in Snick’s bedroom, waiting to be sanded. I decided pretty quicklt that I did not want to use the wood piece as a table number. Instead went back to Pintrest (And Weddingbee.com) for inspiration.

I love the idea of using burlap as the fabric behind the numbers. The hardest part of this was finding the numbers. Most of these DIYs for this are a few years old and the numbers have been discontinued in quite a few places. So I turned to the internet and found Craft Cuts. Here you can choose the font and the size of your wooden numbers. I ended up ordering the Baltic Birch Wooden Numbers. I used the font Whimsical and had my numbers made at three inches and and 1/8 inch thick. I ordered 48 numbers at $1.35 each plus 8.95 shipping and handling. Luckily, I had a twenty percent discount and got the wooden numbers for $60.79. Not too shabby if you ask me.

When it came down to frames, Snicks and I headed over to the dollar store. We decided to go cheap since we’d be painting them anyway. We (I) struggled with choosing 4×6 frames or 5×8 frames for the table numbers. Like always, we decided bigger was better and went with the 5×8 frames. I’m glad we did, the numbers do not look squished together which would have happened if we went with 4×6. So we picked up some black, plain frames and headed to the cash register. The only thing that stunk was that they didn’t have thirty of all the same style, so we had to go with a few different ones. That makes it eclectic, right?

Making them was pretty simple, just a bit tedious to make thirty frames. I did this during Christmas time so I poured myself a glass of wine, put on the Hallmark movie channel and had myself a nice little time.

The hardest part was painting the frame, I had to go over them once or twice since the frames were black. I thought about spray painting them but I wanted to have some of the black coming through, giving it a bit more of a vintage view. I also painted all of the numbers twice as well. After a few frames were painted and dried, I took the back of the frame and mod podged the burlap to the back of the frame. I hot glued the numbers to the burlap and BAM, I was done. It took a little longer then I expected but with the help of wine, I got them all done in a night. All thirty of them.

The Jersey Amazon

I'm a 6'0, recently engaged, twenty something college grad currently working in an entry level until my dream of writing romance novels full time becomes a reality. I've always tried to make an effort to balance an active, healthy lifestyle along with my love for food. Although sometimes I fall short, I dust myself off and promise myself that I'll do better tomorrow. I'm a self proclaimed reality TV junkie, proud Slytherin and country music enthusiast. All in all, you'll probably adore me.